With earnings season almost wrapped up, 2017 data shows so far that shale productivity surprised to the upside, with a few key players, including Occidental Petroleum and RSP Permian, stealing the show.

The atmosphere at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston was ecstatic Thursday as oil prices are finally in a stable realm in which producers can increase profitability and begin to think about how to return cash to shareholders.

The most recent short interest data has been released for the 12/29/2017 settlement date, and we here at Dividend Channel like to sift through this fresh data and order the underlying components of the S&P 500 by "days to cover." There are a number of ways to look at short data, for example the total number of shares short; but one metric that we find particularly useful is the "days to cover" metric because it considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares typically traded. The number of shares short is then compared to the average daily volume, in order to calculate the total number of trading days it would take to close out all of the open short positions if every share traded represented a short position being closed.

ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) announced today that it has reached an agreement on the terms of payment to Burlington, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ConocoPhillips, by the Republic of Ecuador under a February 2017 International...

The most recent short interest data has been released for the 10/31/2017 settlement date, which shows a 5,967,506 share decrease in total short interest for ConocoPhillips , to 26,171,690, a decrease of 18.57% since 10/13/2017. Total short interest is just one way to look at short data; another metric that we here at Dividend Channel find particularly useful is the "days to cover" metric because it considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares traded.

ConocoPhillips said it'll invest $5.5 billion in capital projects each year for the rest of the decade as long as oil prices stay above $50 per barrel. It's the latest move in a pivot to profit in favor of production.

In a study of analyst recommendations at the major brokerages, for the underlying components of the S&P 500, ConocoPhillips has taken over the #35 spot from Electronic Arts, Inc. , according to ETF Channel.